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Apple has added four more Twitter accounts to its iTunes social-media portfolio, an indication that the company once hesitant about social technologies is changing its ways, MG Siegler writes. Yet two of the accounts have under a hundred followers, and the company has yet to ask Twitter for rights to the @apple account, he notes.

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President Barack Obama told students in China that he has never used Twitter. Obama's account has more than 2.6 million followers, but the messages are written by staffers. "This is interesting considering the Internet, and social media in particular, was considered a large part of his ascension to the Presidency," MG Siegler writes.

Plenty of companies have found applications for social media, writes Adam Singer, offering 10 proven uses for the tools. Social sites have helped companies manage their reputations, gain a following, boost SEO strategy and recruit employees. "If you're a brand willing to step outside the box, it is possible to position yourself as the David to your industry's Goliath," he notes.

Twitter is no longer controlled by the people who own it, Steven Levy writes. When the company tried to formalize the re-tweet function, users rebelled because it wasn't done to their liking, he notes. As the company tries to manage its growth and develop a business model, "the challenge is to do that without alienating the very community that's fueling the company's rocket-ship ascent," Levy wrote.

User-generated content has been around since chat rooms in the early '90s, but formal social networks make this content useful to marketers by removing anonymity, Jack Wallington writes. "Removing anonymity means users are a more accurate portrayal of their genuine personality," he notes. "Therefore, the real reason for marketers to be excited about 'social media' is not only because it is mainstream, but because there is a very real crossover in personalities."

Facebook may boast 300 million users, but when it comes to sharing data, Twitter is miles ahead of its rival, MG Siegler writes. While Facebook has spent a lot of time developing sharing tools such as Facebook Connect, Twitter's simplicity and speed still make it a more natural choice for sharing content. The biggest shortcoming, he argues, is that there's no way to efficiently "re-share" content on Facebook, which limits the platform's utility for building buzz.